President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya is increasingly making an impact on the African continent. He is not only continuing the vision of his late father the legendary Mzee Jomo Kenyatta who established a nation bringing together white, black and Asian citizens but also a market economy and liberal democracy.
Although not by any means perfect, what the late man left behind was a prosperous and largely peaceful nation that was the envy of the rest of Africa. He can be equated to the late Felix Houphouet-Boigny of Cote d’Ivoire and Leopold Sedar Senghor of Senegal.These were leaders that were ready and willing to take what was good in Western values and add them to African values to create prosperous nations. The mistake some of their neighbours made was to reject Western values wholesale especially the need to encourage and promote the private sector and the market economy while protecting African businesses. And, most important, they made sure their currencies remained competitive in the world market.
Coming back to Kenya, today you have some Kenyan cities (forget about Nairobi) that look exactly the same as European or North American cities.
And you have the son of the founder of the nation, President Uhuru Kenyatta taking off from where his father and others ended. Kenya is booming.
What, however, motivated me to write this piece is the fact that President Uhuru Kenyatta recently met two of Burundi’s top politicians from both the government and the opposition to try to iron out their differences.
The people of Burundi have known only suffering since their independence from Belgium in the 60s. I think it’s time for them to have some respite; time for them to live in peace and prosperity.
African values like compassion, sharing,inclusiveness, forgiveness and reconciliation should be allowed to resolve the Burundian conflict and not some foreign values that that tend to divide them.
No wonder President Uhuru Kenyatta seems to understand this. He is the son of the author of the ground-breaking anthropological study called Facing Mount Kenya, the father of the Kenyan nation, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta.
Bravo, Uhuru Kenyatta!
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